Quote:
Originally Posted by Emma Corrin
While I agree there could be some merges and some rearranging so that there aren't so many forums to choose from, I feel over simplifying it as you have done will be just as chaotic and confusing. There's definitely something to takeaway from this, though, and that's that some topics and forums can be combined and have little use being separated. On the other hand, we need to watch just how much we combine because having 15 differentiation title tabs will just be horrible to maneuver in my opinion, and it'll create some chaos within the forums themselves because they'll be so overwhelmed with different topics that don't really go together. I think this could have partially been the reasoning behind all of the forum separations.
For me, if I look back and when I first arrived at Menewsha, and I saw very few forums, I'd be like "Oh awesome! I can easily maneuver this!" Then when I got INTO the forums, and saw all of these different headers and titles I'd be like "... huh? Where do I even begin?" And that to me would honestly be a turn off.
On the other hand, going into all of these smaller subforums and seeing only 1 or 2 threads active is also discouraging and a turn off, so I also see the need for merging into a better system so that it doesn't look so spread thin and inactive. I think balance is definitely key, but we just have to be careful of over simplifying it from the outside just to make it even more complicated and confusing on the inside :3
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Emma, thanks for your feedback on my feedback! I do agree, if we were to implement thread tagging that we would have to be smart about it and very minimally create them. TBH, our user base is small, that for instance in a General Discussion or even the Role-play forum we could do with a very limited thread tagging system and still be on a great track of success. Given our user base, I do truly think even with many different types of topics being in the same forum, it would be easier for us to scan the titles and see what we're interested rather than scan a bunch of different forums looking for activity.
Combining the activity to just a few forums would make it very easy to see that Mene does have activity going on, which is very attractive imo and I truly believe it would have a contagion effect in creating activity... For instance, since my return really all I have done in the forums is participated in Dino Tales, and I had an *amazing* time! I was truly shocked to see just how active our community is, and it totally drew me out of my shell and gave me the opportunity to start some friendships even!
I have not given too much thought to what the right amount of thread tagging would look like that would achieve the balance between order without causing overwhelment. I would suggest that we use places like reddit as example. Probably stick to no more than 5 or so different tags for any given forum. A lot of topics would probably fall into an "other" tag which I do think would be okay. But you are absolutely right that a balance is needed, and I do think that could be achieved with very limited forums and limited tags. :)
uncledaddy: Thanks for reading my ideas! I realize how ironic it is that I posted such a long post on how dire I feel minimizing our forums are, but I am grateful you took the effort to consider them. :)