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@Barney
I need a second opinion. Are you going to give it?
Forum Restructuring
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123
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@TheRealNihilist
I have clearly shown how [retaining the Sports forum] is a bad option and you didn't even decide to rebut my points.
Which major points within your posts do you imagine were not already rebuted? Posts #33 and #52 should have covered it...
Let's see:
- "I don't think there are enough posts to warrant a separate section."
- Firstly, you decided to refute this yourself with: "there is only 78 topics"
- I explained "The sports forum ranks 8th is terms of topics (but lags to 14th in terms of overall posts). Combined the TV, Movies, and Music, would currently only match that..."
- "a dead section"
- At this point I had already explained "The sports forum ranks 8th is terms of topics (but lags to 14th in terms of overall posts). Combined the TV, Movies, and Music, would currently only match that..."
- "Tell them to not spam by having a thread "football league discussion". "
- I admit I did not think you were serious on this to warrant a response...
- I don't see what amazing benefit would come from attempting to stifle the varied conversations users wish to have.
- Let me give you a history lesson, 12 days ago Virt started a thread Moderation AMA, to which people repeatedly started other threads to ask questions about the moderation. Do you think the people who participated in those other threads should be banned from the forums or have other moderation action taken against them? I don't.
- "sports section is two people posting stuff." and "You do know there are only 2 people in that thread right?"
- Which was patently untrue: "At a glance, at least five members use the Sports forum."
- "you didn't even decide to rebut my points."
- "At a glance, at least five members use the Sports forum."
- "Just like how people engage with Music. Why doesn't that section have its own thread?"
- We already discussed that repeatedly, but it boils down to... "The sports forum ranks 8th is terms of topics (but lags to 14th in terms of overall posts). Combined the TV, Movies, and Music, would currently only match that (not even getting into how much of the music I would move into the Artistic Expression forum)."
- "Here look at this..."
- No, I don't care to spend my time watching your videos.
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@Swagnarok
@ILikePie5
Do either of you have any points in favor of the Status Quo offering users greater utility than the current proposal? Or even a competing proposal of an even better way things could be?
I am against the Status Quo. Three quick points against it:
- Regular ambiguity for where threads should be placed (AMA's for example, have four different places people want to put them).
- The separation of inactive like items, as exemplified with TV and Movies.
- The Miscellaneous forum for everything else being located in the middle of everything.
Will there be a vote on this?
I don't know if we'll have a formal vote or not. When we try to do things by pure voting, trolls come out of the woodwork (see HoF for examples). I will say however that this was already on Mike's to do list; this thread is more or less taking much of the burden of figuring out the form it should take off his shoulders.
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@WaterPhoenix
That is the intended order. Alphabetical (save for Misc. at the end, and the DebateArt stuff at the beginning), as early users in this thread suggested.I think it's a pretty good idea, but are is the order of the forums going to be in the order you stated?
Popularity would end up getting weird, as people might try to throw off the statistics with irrelevant messages for the hell of it. However, I suspect at some point we'll get sort tools; allowing us to customize our own view of it by things like overall popularity or most recent posting.
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@Barney
Do either of you have any points in favor of the Status Quo offering users greater utility than the current proposal?
It's not that the status quo is good. Rather, it's that what you're proposing (shrinking the number of forums) will make things worse.
Mike, when designing this site, surely thought to himself "What features, if added, will improve utility?" It must've seemed intuitive at the time that to add a "Last post" feature to the right of each forum category would improve utility.
And yet, this assumption is wrong. I thought this feature sucked when I saw it on edeb8 and I think it sucks here as well.
Because you see, when people see that "Last post" option, their brains will (usually) just be like "Oh that's the thread I ought to be checking out". But let's say, for a second, that this feature didn't exist. What then? In that case, every time you wanted to check out a forum you'd actually have to click on it, and see all of the threads recently created/posted in. As it stands right now, when one thread is busy even a newly created thread in that same forum can be "drowned out" by the ongoing discussion in the other thread, and thus never viewed by anyone but the original poster.
Imagine if there was just one forum category. There would literally only be one or two active threads at any one time on DART. While what you're proposing obviously isn't shrinking the number to one, fewer existing categories will only exacerbate this problem.
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@oromagi
Thank you for your detailed post, and sorry for the delay...
I'm not clear on the advantage of halving the number of forums (for users, at least)
Less ambiguity on where things should go, and
Any thread is hopefully more likely to gain interaction with other users.
Nobody seems to respect the forum subject headers all that much anyway.
#Truth
...Users want a couple of spaces for high visibility rapid fire clash- mostly about religion, us current political scene, and above all internal site politics. I think these users should be accommodated without running over the slower conversations with more back & forth, less invective. These users definitely seem to prefer placement at the top of the page.
A lot of users thrive on viability. Fan Fiction getting into the main forum right now as an example (which I do hope the new Art form is active enough to attract such posts; or at least them being ok with things being moved from the community hub to there after a a time).
Mafia needs its own space and there's little point to trying to discuss anything there when games are hot.
The current proposal has Mafia and like games together, and then a separate forum for video gaming (which is honestly a closely related Misc section just for the Games which has been taken over by the Mafia... Poor town, they never stood a chance). The name of that one could do with some refinement, now that I think about the possibility of board games and such which people might want to discuss but not start an online game.
...some folks like me just enjoy posting shit bulletin style with no real expectation or desire for conversation about it. The lesser used forums have worked pretty well for that purpose this year but if we shrink the number of available forums I would guess this type of posting would fall away.
I hope it does not fall away. The intention is in part to encourage more posting, not less. Any suggestions?
Initially the forums seemed poorly organized to me but now I feel like I prefer the pace and decorum of the slower forums and mostly avoid the churn and noise of the busier ones.
Before becoming a moderator, I maintained a higher vote count than forum postings. So I feel you.
Increased competition and rapid posting tends to disintegrate the thread of conversation and discourage my interest, so I expect that any reduction in the number of forums would likely reduce my participation rather than improve it.
Well crap. Any forums currently on the chopping block you would suggest leaving separate? And are there any forums you would like added?
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@Swagnarok
It's not that the status quo is good...
Avoiding things getting drowned out is why Sports got re-separated from TV and Movies (it would have massively dominated them, burying their conversations). But yes, the goal does include increasing average views of threads; if TV and Movies each had over 500 topics (as our most popular forums do), I would not be so quick to suggest they be combined. As is, I'm reminded of a discussing with someone wanting to post things in the main forum instead of the obvious related other forum, because they believed that other place was where things went to die...
Are there any forums currently on the chopping block you would suggest leaving separate? And are there any forums you would like added?
It sounds like we're talking in terms of the posts generated being a bell curve, similar to the Laffer Curve seen with taxation policy. We agree that we're not at an optimal point, but you worry change could go in the wrong direction so propose none be done. My original proposal was likely too far, but I am confident better organization would be beneficial (and within that, some like items should be combined).
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@Barney
we'll get sort tools
Yeah that'd be nice and alphabetical sounds pretty good for now.
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@Barney
Are there any forums currently on the chopping block you would suggest leaving separate? And are there any forums you would like added?
"Cars", "Fashion", and "Nature" could be eliminated. "Games" could be divided into "Games"/" Video Games" and "Forum Games".
but you worry change could go in the wrong direction so propose none be done.
Incorrect. My proposal is that Mike remove the "Last post" option. Him doing so would probably not be overly difficult, as it entails removing an existing feature rather than creating a new one, and doing so would significantly increase quality of use for many users, as forcing them to view a forum category page would regularly expose them to options other than whatever the "trending" topic of that given moment is.
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@Swagnarok
Incorrect. My proposal is that Mike remove the "Last post" option...
My bad, I mistakenly thought your statements "NO nac" and "...will make things worse" were related to the organizational proposal in question.
I personally enjoy the ease of seeing if any new responses have been added to a thread to which I'm interested (the vote request thread as a prominent example), without having to click into it, and then on to the current page. However, I won't lie and claim I've never just skipped ahead to the recent stuff in one without reading everything; thus depriving myself the full nuance.
You seem to have put a lot of thought into your idea for how web forums should operate. With this being a debate site, my suggestion would be to start a debate on it; which would serve both as a peer review, and to begin gathering support.
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@Barney
I personally enjoy the ease of seeing if any new responses have been added to a thread to which I'm interested (the vote request thread as a prominent example), without having to click into it, and then on to the current page
Dang it, you're right. It would have that effect, wouldn't it? What I meant is that there should be no "Last post" feature on the main forums page, but there should be such in the subforum pages, as by the time you're on that page you can already see what other threads are available for posting in. However, admittedly it might not be plausible for Mike to remove one without also getting rid of the other.
I think our current system is fine.
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@Barney
SO when is this happeneing
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@Swagnarok
...there should be no "Last post" feature on the main forums page, but there should be such in the subforum pages, as by the time you're on that page you can already see what other threads are available for posting in. However, admittedly it might not be plausible for Mike to remove one without also getting rid of the other.
The layers to the forums already display different information, so I assume it would be feasible for the table on the main listing of forums to display one less column of information. It could similarly display different information.
I'm not for or against that change.
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@Dr.Franklin
There is no set schedule for when any changes would roll out.
If I had to guess? No earlier than December 1st.
Current Draft (updated at 05:00 PST 11/14):
- DebateArt.com (Community Hub)
- DebateArt.com (Site Management)
- Artistic Expression (community generated art, music, writing, etc.)
- Entertainment Industry (Movies, TV, celebrities, etc.)
- Games (Mafia and other forum games)
- Games (video gaming, board games, etc.)
- Philosophy
- Religion
- Science and Nature
- Society (Politics, History, Economics, etc.)
- Sports
- Miscellaneous (everything else...)
This is only a very slight revision to the previous draft from twelve days ago, with the same items but a few named slightly differently (and subsequently, different order).
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@Mharman
I think our current system is fine.
Do you have any points in favor of the Status Quo offering users greater utility than the current proposal? Or even a competing proposal of an even better way things could be?
I am against the Status Quo. Three quick points against it:
- Regular ambiguity for where threads should be placed (AMA's for example, have four different places people want to put them).
- The separation of inactive like items, as exemplified with TV and Movies.
- The Miscellaneous forum for everything else being located in the middle of everything.
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@Barney
I like it. A real improvement.
But I hope you guys get different names for the two debate.org and game boards.
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@ethang5
I hope you guys get different names for the two debate.org and game boards.
If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.
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@Barney
DebateArt.com (Community Hub)
Dart Community Hub
Validate the "Dart" lingo
DebateArt.com (Site Management)
Dart Site Management
Games (Mafia and other forum games)
Mafia Art or Mafia Nation
We both know mafia will dominate the thread anyway.
Games (video gaming, board games)
Games
I'm not tied to any, i just think too similar forum names will enable confusion.
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@Barney
Religion should appear second in the list.
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@RationalMadman
Religion should appear second in the list.
Early feedback was things should be close to alphabetical, and I am hesitant to reject that without some compelling reason.
Granted, if members of the Religion forum desire the name to be changed to Divinity (or something else), that would put it close to the top as opposed to the later middle.
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@Barney
Please no....if members of the Religion forum desire the name to be changed to Divinity (or something else)
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@Barney
No ragnar, you're just ignoring those of us who said it should be ordered by activity.
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@Barney
I think a current events section is good as well. Rather then discussing broad political issues, they discuss micro events of the day. This section was very popular on a previous platform i was on.
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@RationalMadman
No ragnar, you're just ignoring those of us who said it should be ordered by activity.
Thank you for bringing this portion of the user base to my attention. Please provide the list of users who made that request and to whom I never responded.
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@Barney
In time you will come to understand that I am the one to listen to.
Ethang was another, as was the entire Religion forum.
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@RationalMadman
No ragnar, you're just ignoring those of us who said it should be ordered by activity....Please provide the list of users who made that request and to whom I never responded.In time you will come to understand that I am the one to listen to.Ethang was another, as was the entire Religion forum.
What a profoundly fascinating opinion you have. Please let me know exactly where every member of the religion forum posted this request? Also given the amount of back and forth between Ethang and myself in this thread, where exactly was he being ignored?
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@Barney
There is no reason to order them alphabetically other than to appease OCD members. Ordering them by activity is much more practical; fact. Don't even deny.
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@RationalMadman
Again, "Please let me know exactly where every member of the religion forum posted this request? Also given the amount of back and forth between Ethang and myself in this thread, where exactly was he being ignored?"